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When Mohammed Taha Yaseen recalls the day that Islamic militants swept through Iraq's northern city of Mosul this past summer, he chokes up.

"The army ran away," he says, and pauses to gain control of his voice. "We didn't run, the police stayed and fought ISIS."

Yaseen, an officer in the Mosul police force, tells his story at an isolated training camp in northern Iraq, less than 20 miles from the front lines with ISIS, also known as the Islamic State.

More than 4,000 officers of Nineveh Province security force are based in the training camp, including a 250-man Swat or Special Forces unit.

The forces are gearing up with the aim of retaking Iraq's second largest city, seized by militants who have declared Mosul the capital of a so-called caliphate.

These police officers want to lead that fight. The future role for these officers, mostly Sunni Arabs, will say a lot about the political future of Iraq, a country deeply divided between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State is already preparing for the counter attack. The group recently cut phone lines. Bridges into Mosul have been mined, according to Kurdish officials. In a return to a tactic of ancient war, the militants are digging a moat around the city. They know the attack is coming, but not when.

Iraqi officials and U.S. advisers aren't sure either. There are differences over when the Iraqi army will be trained and ready. There are debates about who will be armed to join the fight.

Training, But No Weapons

For now, the Mosul officers live in tents with dirt floors, and train without weapons. On the day I visited the camp, they sloshed through rivers of mud for a meal of steaming rice and chicken ladled out of aluminum pots from the back of a pickup truck.

On one row of tents, the word "SWAT" is written, in English. The Special Forces teams are housed together. It is also a reminder of better times, when the U.S. spent billions in a multi-year program to strengthen the Iraqi police. These men worked alongside Americans to kill or capture Islamist militants in Mosul.

"All the police of Nineveh trained with the coalition at the time," says Gen. Wathiq Hamdani, the head of Nineveh Security Forces until 2008, now with Iraq's Ministry of Defense. "In this camp, about 4,375 men, all of them had trained with the coalition forces at that time."

For these men the fight against ISIS is personal, they say, because the militants have targeted their families.

"All of these police officers, Da'esh killed some of their family members," says Hamdani, using the Arabic term for ISIS. "They killed my son." He quickly looks down to scroll through his phone to find a picture of a smiling young man killed by the militants last year.

SWAT members, shown here at mealtime, live in tents with dirt floors and train without weapons. Deborah Amos/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Deborah Amos/NPR

Now, he adds, the militant group is holding his brother.

The other men in the room say they were targeted, too. A detective, who says his name is Major Mohammed, chief of Interpol in Mosul, rolls up his sleeve to show the scar from a bullet and points to his leg.

"They shot me, 2005 and 2008," he says.

Waiting For The Americans

They are angry at the loss, frustrated that the battle for Mosul is on hold and that Baghdad has failed to support them. In the meantime, they have backing from the Americans who have visited this camp and offered to start training soon.

"Maybe in the next week. Maybe," says Hamdani. But the Americans have made no promises to provide the weapons Hamdani says he needs. "The weapons come from Baghdad."

For many of the men, including Gen. Wathiq Hamdani, the fight is personal. ISIS killed the Iraqi defense official's son and is still holding his brother. Deborah Amos/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Deborah Amos/NPR

So far, Baghdad has delivered one small shipment of 1,000 Kalashnikov rifles and 30 heavy machine guns. It's not nearly enough, says Hamdani, against a dangerous enemy that is well-armed with U.S. weapons seized in Mosul when the Iraqi army collapsed in June. The fleeing Iraqi army left behind millions of dollars worth of U.S. armaments.

Why can't the police get proper weapons?

Hamdani believes it's a matter of trust, another example of the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq.

The Mosul Police force is mostly Sunni, which is a plus in any battle for Mosul, a majority Sunni city.

But the central government in Baghdad is dominated by Shiites. They accuse Sunnis of welcoming the Sunni militants of ISIS, joining the movement as they swept across north and central Iraq.

Overcoming Mistrust

Shiite officials in Baghdad are reluctant to arm Sunnis, even these officers, for fear they will join ISIS or sell their weapons to the militants. The government suspended police salaries in June.

But Hamdani points out that the Mosul police force is diverse. Major Mohammed adds that the force reflects every community in Mosul and they all volunteered to fight.

"You find Christian, Muslim, Kurdish and Arabic officers," he says. "We have Shiites from Mosul in the police," says Hamdani. He introduces two Shiite Muslims from Mosul who fled south to Najaf in June, and have now arrived at the camp to rejoin their police unit.

Outside Hamdani's office, men in uniforms huddle inside the tents to shelter from the rain. They sing traditional Iraqi songs, clap, drink sugary tea, and smoke.

They keep up their spirits on a cold and soggy day. They've served together for years and now wait for attitudes in Baghdad to change.

"When they voluntarily come to fight, that means they are credible," says Dr. Rafea al-Eissawi.

He is a former deputy prime minister, a Sunni Arab doctor who practiced in Fallujah, in the western province of Anbar. His mission is to get Sunni fighting forces recognized by the central government.

"They have to pay for them and give them really good weapons in order to fight against Da'esh," he says. "Without arming the Sunnis, nothing can move."

The Iraqi army and government-backed Shiite militias are distrusted and feared by the Sunnis. The Mosul police and Sunni Arab tribes have street knowledge and ties to the local communities. But Baghdad remains reluctant.

Good News From Baghdad

At the police camp, a phone call to Hamdani signals a small shift in Baghdad.

The Interior Minister has agreed to re-start salaries for the Mosul police. Hamdani beams as he announced the news.

"Very good," he says as the room erupts in congratulations and the laughter of relief.

"Now, the government has changed, it's not like before. That is a good for us," says Major Mohammed. "For example, the minister of defense, he is from Mosul."

"The people of Mosul are waiting for us," he says. "I know the people and how they think."

He is convinced they will only turn against ISIS when a Sunni force comes to liberate the city.

But even as these officers savored the turnabout in Baghdad, there was no word on weapons deliveries, or an order to begin preparations for the battle for Mosul. The longer it takes, the better the Islamic State militants can prepare for the assault.

Iraq

By a 44-5 vote, Chicago's City Council set a minimum-wage target of $13 an hour, to be reached by the middle of 2019. The move comes after Illinois passed a nonbinding advisory last month that calls for the state to raise its minimum pay level to $10 by the start of next year.

The current minimum wage in Chicago and the rest of Illinois is $8.25. Under the ordinance, the city's minimum wage will rise to $10 by next July and go up in increments each summer thereafter.

The legislation includes several findings of a focus panel that examined the wage issue in Chicago earlier this year.

The bill states that "rising inflation has outpaced the growth in the minimum wage, leaving the true value of lllinois' current minimum wage of $8.25 per hour 32 percent below the 1968 level of $10.71 per hour (in 2013 dollars)."

It also says nearly a third of Chicago's workers, or some 410,000 people, currently make $13 an hour or less.

The timing of the vote reflects a political reality, as Emanuel and other Chicago leaders are maneuvering ahead of the next election cycle.

"Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to pre-empt state action on local minimum wages," Northern Public Radio reports, adding that among those who approve the pay hikes, "Officials are worried business groups will push for Springfield legislation that prohibits municipalities raising their minimum wage higher than the state's."

As NPR's Marilyn Geewax reported after the midterm elections, voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota approved binding referendums that raise their states' wage floor above the federal minimum.

Chicago

minimum wage

We are well into the Christmas season, and if you live in Japan, that means sponge cake.

The traditional Japanese Christmas dish is served with strawberries and cream, and it is rich, thanks to lots and lots of butter. But the Japanese have been using even more butter for their Christmas cakes this year, exacerbating what was already a national butter shortage.

Elaine Kurtenbach, a reporter for the Associated Press in Tokyo, says climate change and an aging farming industry have led to the butter crisis. (Here's her Thursday story for the AP.)

i i

A man prepares a Japanese-style Christmas sponge cake at the Patisserie Akira Cake shop on Dec. 23, 2011 in Himeji, Japan. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

A man prepares a Japanese-style Christmas sponge cake at the Patisserie Akira Cake shop on Dec. 23, 2011 in Himeji, Japan.

Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

"The weather up in Hokkaido, which is the main dairy region in Japan, is getting very hot in the summer and extremely cold in the winter, so the cows are stressed, and they don't produce enough milk," Kurtenbach tells NPR's Audie Cornish on All Things Considered. "And on top of that, the average age of farmers is about 70 now, and not many young people want to do the work."

Some cake shops in Japan have switched to margarine and other shortenings, but cake lovers are still left longing for the taste of butter, Kurtenbach says.

"Traditionally the Japanese aren't big consumers of dairy products apart from say, the elite," she says. "But when it comes to modern Japanese, they certainly eat a lot of Western food, they eat a lot of pastries and chocolates and cakes, and especially at Christmas time, not having enough butter on the shelves is kind of galling to many people."

For more from the interview, click on the audio link above.

Christmas foods

butter

Japan

A 44-year-old Northern White Rhino named Angalifu died this week at the San Diego Zoo of old age.

Now only five animals remain in this subspecies, all in captivity. Four are females. The one male lives in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

So it would seem the Northern White Rhino is doomed to extinction. Poachers are to blame — they've slain thousands of Northern White Rhinos to get their horns, which are hawked in Asia as a health tonic.

But there may still be a way to bring back this two-ton creature. The Ol Pejeta Conservancy is contemplating an idea. It's a bit complicated. But who knows?

First, a bit of history. There have been efforts to save the Northern White Rhino before. Rhino rarely breed in captivity, so just before Christmas in 2009, four Northern White Rhinos were airlifted from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Kenya's Ol Pejeta. They were placed in the heavily guarded 600-acre enclosure designed to mimic their natural environment. The half-a-million dollar operation was dubbed "Last Chance To Survive." The CEO of Ol Pejeta, Richard Vigne, says the rhino regained wild habits like nocturnal feeding. Although it took more than two years till the happy day that a duo was spotted mating behind a bush.

"I don't think there was champagne uncorked," says Vigne. But those in the know kept watch and said the female was "definitely pregnant ... so you know we convinced ourselves pretty well that this was working."

It was a false alarm. There would be no pitter-patter of little hooves. Vigne wondered if maybe those years in a zoo cage had permanently knocked out the ability to reproduce.

In-vitro fertilization is an option. But what takes ten minutes for dairy cows is expensive and experimental in rhino.

"You're dealing with semi-wild, what, 2 ton animal?" he says. "Which is very different than dealing with completely domesticated cattle."

Now another plan is being considered: To extract a northern white rhino egg, fertilize it with frozen northern white rhino sperm and implant it the surrogate womb of a genetically different subspecies: Southern White Rhino.

The Southern White Rhino look almost identical to the Northerns, though they have a larger front horn, and they also prefer a grassy environment while the Northerns like denser bush.

But perhaps the biggest difference between the Southern and Northern White Rhino is their epic comeback story.

At the turn of the last century, Southern White Rhino had been hunted down to a mere 20 animals. The last of the Southerns were collected, protected and bred. Now they number more than 14,000.

"I have bred over 700 rhinos," says John Hume, a private rhino owner/breeder who has been an advocate for legalizing rhino horn, "and the Southern White Rhino is a relatively user-friendly animal. It wants to cooperate, it wants to breed, it does not want to go extinct."

Hume breeds them the old-fashioned way: he brings some males and females together and lets biology do the rest.

Why did the Southern breeding efforts succeed where the Northern attempts have so far failed? The Southern White Rhino attempts began when the animals were younger. They were also wilder. 100 years ago, when those 20 last Southern White Rhino were collected and bred, they were taken straight from the savannah, not from a zoo.

Perhaps what enabled them to breed is that little bit of wildness that never left them.

If plans for a surrogacy attempt are approved, the Southern knack for survival might give a ray of hope to their near-extinct Northern cousins.

angalifu

northern white rhino